For a long time now I have found that I don't see any difference between a committed couple who are living together or a married couple. I am always delighted to marry people because it is an expression of their love and joy that they want to share with the rest of us. It is also an expression of hope and commitment to one another and it is lovely, lovely, lovely. However, having discovered how difficult it is to get unmarried I understand why people perhaps choose to keep things simpler from a legal point of view (if living together is simpler) and I can also understand the desire to proclaim that they live together because they want to and not because they feel bound contractually to do so. I am not sure which route I would choose if I was a lay person, as it is, I do not have the luxury of the choice as I am ordained.
This feels like a very controversial stance in the company of some, but there are a couple of things that I can use to justify it. The first is the question of when a couple 'get married', is it:
- when they sign the register
- when they first have sex
- when the priest announces that they are man and wife or
- when they determine in their hearts to love one another for the rest of their lives?
For me it is the last one, and so a wedding service becomes an outward symbol of an inner reality, a bit like baptism.
Secondly, historically this was always the case. A clever friend of mine wrote:
In the Bible there are lots of marriages but precious few weddings. The bridegroom does a deal with the bride’s father and takes her to bed – at least in earlier passages. If we think of marriage as a committed relationship of two people to each other, usually with the possibility of producing children, people do it because they want the relationship. When a couple announce to their friends and relatives that they have decided to live together, they are doing what would have counted, near enough, as marriage in the UK before the 1753 Act.So can we all just let people get on with it and if there is a wedding then great, let's party, but otherwise let's trust folks to know for themselves what is best for them?
18 comments:
thanks for blog. daughter plans 2 live with bf after graduating as a trial for marriage and this gives me a helpful way of looking at it.
Seems to me that marriage has been used as a control mechanism to ensure proper 'morality' and the church has been a very willing participant in that. However, as the church is theoretically not the lead player in the setting of moral behaviour anymore and ought not to be about controlling peoples lives, I can't see any reason for it to have any role in marriage at all.
Similarly, unless it's trying to control clergy, why would it feel the need to keep setting the rules about how clergy decide to set up relationships? I can't think of any real reason why it should be a problem for a clergy person to live with someone instead of marrying them.
I am sad that as a priest you don't feel inclined to defend this sacrament.
'Couldn't care less' ... I sense that as an incumbent, you will need to formulate your view on the sacrament of marriage. When two divorcees come to your door looking for re-marriage you will need to determine what you actually think about marriage, not care less about it, if I may be so bold.
Controversial yes ... but to who? Most Christians I think.
You have taken a view of this sacrament and then just built an argument to defend it. That doesnt make you right, but the secularists will love you for this post!
I think the song goes: I do, I do I do I do I do I do, da da da da.
I wrote my own marriage ceremony. That's the point I made the actual commitment. That was the outward moment of the personal decision.
It doesn't prevent the drifting later on.
By the way, I think you are right: it is an outward sign of decisions taken.
Lol! Lesley! I just read this to Roy who said "I know what Lesley is up to. She has got hold of a catechism, and is going through each point, writing an anti-catechism."
Your blog makes us all stop and think, and that is good, even if we don't agree with you!
I don't actually think that the bible is a great help here. When it was written, marrying for love wasn't known, although that doesn't mean that some couples didn't love each other. But marriage was primarily a social contract to do with binding families and passing on property.
Little of that applies these days and I would agree that the true Christian spirit of what marriage is about lies in the deep committment the couple makes to each other.
How they then formalise that nor not is a secondary issue.
But if we really took that view seriously, we should not allow marriage between people who don't appear to love each other... which really is quite impossible.
The only pragmatic and to my mind theologically satisfying view would be to marry those who want to be married and leave the rest between them and God.
lol... perhaps I was using a touch of hyperbole :) Toned the first sentence down a little.
Cloakey, you great nutter - Of course I know what my views are on marriage and remarriage... btw I don't think the CofE views marriage as a sacrament.
Thinking about these things are good.. they are very cultural. I had Mexican students who referred to themselves as 'married' but hadn't done a ceremony of any description - in their culture it was much later in life that they do the ceremony, when they can afford a party. I sense that our society is tending towards that, and indeed has been like that in the past... I still saw my Mexican students as married, and I see my friends who have long term partners as married.. to me it is an attitude of the heart.
Nutter huh!
Yup, no arguments there! Today's Gospel was a little bit of a pickle though lol! Some of the CofE regard marriage as such, for I do, and I am part of the CofE (actually, a lot do, though it is eroded these days by 'life')
:D
Make your mind up Lesley. You define marriage in sacramental terms 'and so a wedding service becomes an outward symbol of an inner reality, a bit like baptism.' and then have a go at David for speaking in those terms.
lol - I was brought up an Anglo-Catholic and sacramental ways of thinking are important to me. I was shocked to find that the CofE only had 2 sacraments and not 7... I'm not having a go at Cloakey - we are mates in rl - just playing
The big part of weddings IMO is the commitment of the community to hold and support the couple in their marriage. The rest (except the government part in the US) they can do for themselves. Part of what I want a church to look at is their role in keeping the couple from isolation. Many gay and lesbian couples want that communal support to protect then from a world that wants to tear them apart and deny their love.
I would say that the Church catholic regards Marriage as a sacrament, and as far as the Church of England is still part of the catholic Church or professes to be then for me Marriage is a sacrament. My rector when I was a curate used to say to couples in his address at their wedding; 'today is the wedding, tomorrow the marriage begins'. I think that's sometimes a helpful way of looking at things. Anyway I think it's all about context i.e. what we believe about the Church, Sacraments and the Kingdom and how God works in and through all of that. And I guess it depends upon how the couple see those things too, if they do at all. For a mind and heart expanding treatise on sacraments I would urge any clergy person to read the late Fr. Alexander Schmemann's 'For the Life of the World'. Maybe I'm biased being a fan of Orthodoxy, but it's well worth a read. The Orthodox don't unpick the sacraments like we do i.e. trying to discern, where, when, why and how God works; for them the sacraments are mysteries, God is in them and the whole thing matters. It might sound like an easy get out theologically, but it really isn't.
Colin,
but marriage is the one sacrament that the church confirms after the couple has declared it. So the question would be whether the church confirmation is a necessary part of it or whether the marriage exists without it.
Until the 1750's in England (later in Scotland), any couple living together as man and wife and calling themselves married were considered to be so, in the fullest meaning of the word. Marriage was a relationship, not a ceremony.
Then new legislation came in, making a ceremony and an entry in the marriage register compulsory. I don't know who authorised the church to change its definition of sin to comply with government rules, but it meekly followed suit. The result is that we've made the ceremony and the piece of paper all-important, and we've diverted attention from the relationship.
When I joined my curent church, one of our ladies wouldn't become a member because she wasn't married to her partner (this one used to come up regularly); she's now a church steward, and plays a vital role in running the place. I don't know why people like her, in long-term committed relationships, should be regarded as 'sinners', while people who get married, divorce, and marry again repeatedly can be regarded as 'respectable'. We hear regular complaints about marriage being 'devalued', but I think we played a major role in that ourselves. We need to sort out our theology of marriage, and put the spotlight clearly on the quality of the relationship, regardless of the ceremony.
In West Africa, where my wife comes from, marriage is traditionally an informal contract between the families, and a 'customary marriage' is recognised by everyone. We did it both ways, and regarded ourselves as married as soon as we'd been through the 'customary' ceremony, which we disguised as an engagement.
This is all fascinating: I personally find it rather interesting that it was in the time I'd consider 'The Age of Enlightenment' that one finds this legalised (and formalised!) definition of marriage coming through.
If the 'Church' was happy enough with the arrangement before, I wonder what changed, or was it another example of the zeitgeist zeal for labelling, pinning down and rationalising human relations?
For me getting married is about wanting to try for a faithful permanence, promised before and upheld by God, which -- at least ideally -- enables two people to grow in knowledge and love of God and of each other . . . to flourish. If two people decided that they wished to be married and made promises to each other before God, I wouldn't really care whether they had been inside a church or not. But I do worry when people want to live together but don't want to commit to marriage. There are levels of commitment and levels of commitment. Does simply living together -- particularly if one of the reasons is that it's easier to undo -- provide the level of commitment which enables flourishing? Or the reflection of God's faithfulness to us that makes marriage a symbol of something beyond itself? (And yes, I'm aware that trying and succeeding are not the same thing . . . but prefer people at least to start out with the idea of trying!)
Hi Anonymous. Yes, I agree with you. I think you are right... however some people do struggle, after painful divorces, either their own or their parents, and I am very sympathetic. I think in the end it is the values that are important...
Thanks, Lesley, for your gracious comment.
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